Your catch-up period & opening balances
What 'catch-up' covers, fiscal vs. calendar year, how your starting balances are set, and a realistic timeline.
Your catch-up period & opening balances
Two ideas shape how your books begin: your catch-up period — the historical window we bring current — and your opening balances — the financial starting point everything builds from. Understanding both upfront makes the whole process feel less mysterious and helps you see why we ask for the documents we do.
Catch-up is the stretch of history we're bringing up to date. Opening balances are where your books start, and they come largely from your last tax return. Both are confirmed with you early — you don't have to figure them out on your own.
What "catch-up" covers
Catch-up is the work of bringing your books current from a chosen starting point through today. For a new client, that often means a prior year plus the current year to date — for example, all of 2025 plus 2026 so far. The exact window depends on how far behind the books are and what you need.
The scope is decided together on your kickoff call, based on a few things:
- When your books were last accurate (often, your last filed tax return).
- Whether you need a full prior year cleaned up or just the current year.
- Any specific deadlines you're working toward, like a tax filing or a loan application.
Once that window is set, it becomes the period we collect statements and documents for — which is why we ask for every month across it, not just recent activity.
If you have a filing deadline or a report someone is waiting on, mention it on your kickoff call. It directly affects how we scope and sequence your catch-up, and the earlier we know, the better we can plan around it.
Calendar year vs. fiscal year
Most small businesses run on a calendar year: their books and taxes follow January 1 through December 31. Some businesses instead use a fiscal year — any twelve-month period that ends in a month other than December (for example, July through June).
Why it matters for you: the year boundary is where one accounting period closes and the next opens, and it's the line your opening balances are anchored to. If your business uses a fiscal year rather than a calendar year, tell us — it changes where your periods start and end, and we want your books aligned to the same calendar your taxes use.
How your opening balances are set
Your opening balance sheet is the snapshot of what your business owns and owes at the moment your books begin — cash, equipment, loans, owner equity, and so on. We don't guess at these numbers. The most reliable source is your most recent business tax return, because the balances it reports are the official, already-filed starting point we can build forward from.
From your last return, we establish things like:
- The balances of your asset and liability accounts at year-end.
- Your owner equity position — your stake in the business, or what's left after you subtract what it owes from what it owns.
- Loan balances, which we then track going forward as you pay them down.
That's why the prior-year return is one of the first documents we ask for — without it, we're reconstructing your starting point from scratch, which is slower and less precise.
If your most recent tax return hasn't been filed yet, or you can't locate it, catch-up can stall — we don't have a confirmed starting point to build from. If this is your situation, tell your onboarding specialist early so we can find the best path forward together rather than getting stuck partway in.
A realistic timeline
Catch-up isn't instant, and how long it takes depends mostly on how much history we're covering and how quickly the documents come in. The single biggest lever is on your side: the faster your statements, returns, and answers to transaction questions reach us, the faster your books finish.
A few honest expectations:
- Connecting accounts and gathering documents is the part that most often sets the pace — gaps here are the most common reason a catch-up stretches out.
- Your reports stay incomplete and not tax-ready while catch-up is underway, which is completely normal.
- A finalized set of books typically follows about 5–7 business days after your catch-up period ends and everything has been reconciled.